Phil 216
Our world has evolved in so many ways over the years, both physically and intelligently. We as human beings have evolved right along with it. When we think of sciences, we immediately think about how things work, and how the human mind “works”; but when we think about being morally philosophical, we think what humans ought to be and what they out to think. These ideas lead into philosopher Joshua Greene’s views on deontology vs. consequences.
Ultimately Greene thinks there is no external fact about what is right or wrong but the best we can do is be consistent with our values as they are. So, what does this mean? One good example is the infamous “trolley example” where there are 5 people standing on the track and they are about to be hit by the trolley, and there is another track with one person standing on the tracks, and you have the choice to “pull the switch” so the trolley goes to the other track saving the 5 people but resulting in killing the one other person. Many people say they would pull the switch because they would be saving 5 people instead of just one. But, if you made the situation more personal, and up front where you would push a person in front of the trolley in order to slow the trolley down and to save the other 5 people, a lot more people said they wouldn’t push the person and just let things take its own course. Now why would this have changed if it is the same scenario, just different ways to do it? Greene views it as, people tend to act for a “good will” and that it is more duty based and people don’t think about the consequences of their actions; where people tend to ignore moral ambiguity so to say. In the situation where they “pull the switch” people tend to think “This action is a good deed!” But when it becomes more personal and pushing someone in front of the trolley, then people’s thoughts become “this action is just evil.”
The Essay on People Are Friends Friendship Good Aristotle
Throughout Aristotle's examination of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics, he refers to the friendship between a parent and a child in a number of different ways. Aristotle believes that there are three different kinds of friendship. One type is a friendship based on the use one friend has for anther. In this case, two people are friends because they give an advantage to the other or serve some ...
Doing this study in class, our results concluded the same thing that most people would pull the switch, yet only a few would push a person in front of the trolley. Seeing I am a science nerd I came to conclude my moral philosophical experiment with bioethics. As we are moving into the future, science and technology keeps growing and growing, leading us to be able to do and manipulate things that may not be ethical.
My experiment is about human cloning. A group of scientists are able to make human clones, that have identical genetic codes and DNA as the original person. They decide to make a business out of these clones, a “black market” so to say. How their business works is that they have their offices way out where nobody knows and they raised these clones in a controlled civilization. They grow it from a pod, brain washing it about its life, so when it is born as an adult they think they had a past and memories and what not. This is so the clone is more human like and more of an a exact match to their original person. The original person would buy this clone, so in case anything happened to them, like they needed a heart transplant, or got cancer, they would use their clone as a back up for parts or to keep them alive. The thing is though, the “owners” don’t know that the scientist are actually raising the clones as human beings in another life, they were told their exact parts were all just in a genetic sac and were just ready whenever they needed them.
Okay, so here is where problems start to kick in. The scientist didn’t think of the consequences of raising actual clones. They are just like human beings, and are able to think, process situations, and develop the brain and become more intelligent. They learn from mistakes, they are seekers to find things out, and of course they have feelings; both physically and emotionally. Humans are very curious beings, and like to question things, and explore and solve problems, these traits are also in these clones, which they could find out situations they weren’t meant to find out.
The Essay on Meaning to Human Life
Is there any meaning to human life? After listening to the first two lectures I gathered what I felt to be Professor Amrbosio’s definitions of the hero and the saint. I took notes and after going back through and reading them it helped me to put a few things together. He asks the question about whether or not human existence is meaningful or absurd. We live in a hostile and deadly environment so ...
So, when a person becomes ill and needs his/her, “life insurance, the clone” it is taking and pretty much slaughtered for parts, so the original owner has its exact match and wouldn’t have to wait for a donor. Many people would do this sort of life insurance by arguing that it’s not a real person, it’s themselves, it would save their lives because they wouldn’t have to wait for a matched donor, etc. But they don’t know how their parts are “harvested”. If in fact that the owner of the clone saw that it was an actual human being, life like, and looked exactly like them, their thoughts would take a different turn. If they saw that in order to get those parts, the scientist had to physically kill the clone, less people would get this type of life insurance. They would see it as murder, rather than saving their lives.
This experiment shows the deontological views of how humans behave. Not once did the scientist question, “How will the clones react in the end?” etc. And at first, the scientist were praised for coming up with such a great idea to help people stay alive, but once it was found out that they looked and acted exactly like human beings, and murdered for parts, the scientist wind up being held responsible when the situation becomes personal. We as humans find ourselves reacting to the situation and would now what to punish the scientist, when before it was personal, wanted to praise them.
But then a different point of view comes to mind as well. Thinking cloning as bettering humanity, which is one of Greene’s main topics is training the way we think to better humanity as a whole. Cloning to save one’s life contradicts back to Charles Darwin’s theory about natural selection. If we manipulate natural selection, and keep more people alive, it is not necessarily better for humanity because than we start to evolve into world issues like; over population, shortage on vegetation, etc. How far is too far? Natural selection is more so “survival of the fittest” or the saying “every man for their own”. This is somewhat how are brains were made to be. Pretty much saying, though we have evolved as humans, our brains were still developed like a “hunter-gatherer” where are social instincts weren’t necessarily developed for the modern world we live in today.
The Essay on Abortion People Baby Child
Page 1 ABORTION In some cases people think that abortion is wrong. They think that killing an innocent a baby is like committing murder. In this paper I will be talking a little bit about partial birth abortion. And a little about the Roe V. Wade court case. Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy before birth (World Book Encyclopedia A, pg. 15). Usually when people have an abortion they want to get ...
We have no set “moral instinct” and many people think what is right/wrong, but what we really need is just a set common ground on morality. Where general more rules would be establish, so everyone had a “common ground” to fall back on. Greene also mentions the baby dilemma. Where if you were with a group of people and were hiding from enemy soldiers, and had to be completely silent. But, your baby starts crying loudly, and if nothing is done, then the soldiers will come kill you, your baby, and everyone else. So, the only way of keeping the baby quiet, is covering your hand over its mouth, resulting in you smothering it to death. Greene explains, that right away people’s motherly instinct comes out, and immediately thinks “Don’t kill the baby!” but then at the same time, if you don’t kill the baby, then everyone dies.
As it is shown through my more scientific/futuristic experiment, science and technology keep evolving, but our social norms and ways of thinking kind of stay the same. Even through the process of cloning, when you don’t see it up front and personal, and you are just getting a “part” to save your life, then it is thought to be okay. But, once it is humanized and shown that the clone is being slaughter for that part, one tends to think “don’t kill that clone, it’s a human too!” No matter what time period we are in, there is always going to be debate over right and wrong, and being morally good, and the consequences of you actions, versus it’s your duty to act for the sake of the goodwill of humanity.
It is clearly seen that what Greene’s main purpose is by understanding how humans think and react to things, that we can somewhat start to teach ourselves to think better. We can create ways to better serve humanity as a whole rather than just ourselves which would create a universal understanding of what humans “ought to do”.
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²Greene, J.D. (2003) From neural “is” to moral “ought”: what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol. 4, 847-850.
The Essay on The Identity and Moral Status of the Human Embryo
Previously to the scientific breakthrough, fertilization, that is the fusion of the male and female gametes, was always known to be carried out inside the human body. But nowadays, our findings prove otherwise. This technique is called InVitro Fertilization with Embryo Transfer (IVF-ET). This type of fertilization takes place inside a petri dish in a laboratory.Ova are removed by means of surgical ...
³Greene, J. D. (2007).
The secret joke of Kant’s soul, in Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development, W. Sinnott-Armstrong, Ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
